Five Points needs tacos, tequila and beer

Want to run a restaurant in Five Points? Here's an ad from Craigslist:

Newly renovated and ready-to-go restaurant/bar facility is looking for an owner/operator to run an upscale TACO BAR concept. Located in the heart of Denver's up-and-coming Five Points/Whittier/Curtis Park neighborhood. Facility already has existing liquor license in place, full kitchen with modern equipment, furniture, big-screen televisions, pool table and outdoor patio. This is a golden opportunity for a prospective owner/operator with restaurateur and hospitality experience to take over a "turn key" facility with minimal investment, and open the doors for business within just a few weeks.

One of Denver's "hottest" neighborhoods, many young professionals, young families and artists are moving into Five Points but we lack a good place for tacos, tequila and beer. We currently own and operate the building ourselves, and are looking for an inspiring, hard-working, dedicated and imaginative entrepreneur to bring a dynamic food/taco bar operation to our facility!

3090 Downing Street

The space can't be Zona's, because that forty-year-old spot didn't have a liquor license -- and probably won't be able to get one, given its proximity to a school.

Our guess is the great space at 3090 Downing Street that was most recently the unfortunately named Swallows, Blackberries Bar & Grill before that, the Kiva before that, and before that, Tosh's Hacienda.

Tosh's was an institution for close to five decades, starting out as a little storefront, then moving into the 3090 Downing Street building, which had been a church. But by the time Jason Sheehan reviewed Tosh's, it was already going downhill -- and wound up taking several Hacienda offshoots with it.

Five Points could definitely use some tacos, tequila and beer. And 3090 Downing could definitely use a tenant -- whether or not its the focus of this ad.

Patricia Calhoun co-founded Westword, Denver’s News and Arts weekly, in 1977; she’s been the editor there ever since. She’s a regular on the weekly Colorado Public Television roundtable Colorado Inside Out, the former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies -- a post that got her an unexpected interview with former President Bill Clinton in front of a thousand people (while she was in flip-flops) -- and played a real journalist in John Sayles’s Silver City.